On the RNC's effort to exploit Booker's comments by launching an "I Stand With Cory Booker" petition: "Here they are plucking soundbytes out of that interview to manipulate them in a cynical manner, to use them for their own purposes … I'm very upset that I'm being used by the GOP this way."

On his support for President Obama on the issues: Anybody in the GOP who wants to stand with me, please stand with me. Stand with me for marriage equality, as Barack Obama stands up for. Stand with me for not turning the clock back on women in terms of medical issues, like Barack Obama is standing again. Stand with me on making healthcare more accessible to all. Stand with me for making college more affordable as President Obama is doing."

On his own mistake of comparing Obama campaign's attacks on Bain with conservative attacks on Obama over Jeremiah Wright: "Those can't even be equated. The noxious nature of some of the attacks that we've seen on our president, where if you even poll many people in the GOP who still believe he's a secret Muslim and these other things, it's gotten ridiculous. You can't even equate the negativity on the right with what's happening by sectors on the left."

On what he was really trying to say on Meet the Press: "My outrage and really my frustration was about the cynical negative campaigning and manipulating of the truth."

On the GOP's lack of interest in urban issues: "To say I stand with Cory Booker — I have not seen a Republican national candidate, with maybe the exception of Jack Kemp a long time ago, willing to stand with me in places like Newark, New Jersey, Camden, New Jersey, Paterson — places that often the GOP seems to want to imagine don't exist."

The result is that Booker had to do some damage control the last two days, and the question is whether Obama 2012 needs another strategy against Romney. Welcome to politics. in the end, Booker spoke his mind and here's hoping Obama 2012 heard the message, but I doubt it. You may not like this, but it is the system we are in right now.